There are signs of a small but growing Twitter exodus underway following Elon Musk’s closure of the deal to buy the social media platform last Thursday. While many Twitter users are taking a wait-and-see approach and may not have fully deleted their accounts at this time, a sizable number of people are currently checking out Twitter alternatives. One of those alternatives is Mastodon, a decentralized social network that gained more than 70,000 new sign-ups on Friday, the day after the Musk Twitter takeover completed. And this weekend, the official Mastodon mobile app saw a record number of downloads as more people fleeing Twitter began to seek out a new online home.
Mastodon, to be clear, is not a new platform. The free and open source microblogging service debuted in March 2016, offering a different approach to online social networking. Similar to Twitter, you can follow other users and create posts that